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Remedyforce + Social Media: Defined.

BMC Remedyforce is a cloud-based IT Service Management solution. The application, built on the Salesforce.com platform, is helping IT organizations modernize their approach to IT service management with the mobile, social and collaborative technologies that today’s modern businesses expect. Building, marketing, and selling Remedyforce while the application is at work in customer environments has turned the entire Remedyforce team into a living example of a modern, social, collaborative team.

Learn how the Remedyforce team has made social collaboration part of their workday. Then, put on your social media hat and give it a try.

85% of the Remedyforce Team Uses Social Media to connect with co-workers and peers. *2013 Remedyforce Team Social Media Usage Survey.

How To: The Social Media Tools.

The Remedyforce team leverages social platforms including, LinkedIn, Facebook, the BMC Product User Community, Twitter, and Chatter to stay connected internally as well as with Remedyforce customers and prospects. Each platform opens internal and external communication channels, which increases knowledge sharing and improves customer communication. An issue might come up on Twitter, the team discusses the solution on Chatter, then follows up with the customer. This communication process maximizes team engagement and results in happier, more engaged customers.

97% of the Remedyforce team says social media is Important to their ability to do their job. That includes Marketing, Product, Customer Service, IT, and more.

Remedyforce Online User Community:The team has made the Remedyforce user community an online customer destination. Customers use the forum to ask questions, and provide feedback. The Remedyforce team members use it as place to learn about customer needs. Users stay engaged with new content and discussions – in FY14 engagement spiked as 31 new posts drove nearly 1500 views per posts. The team’s work has taken it from a Top 13 BMC User Community to Top 7. Now, the goal is to be in the Top 4.

Remedyforce Chatter Group: Chatter is a social collaboration tool that drives internal information sharing. The general Remedyforce Chatter Group posts 50 discussions a month about everything from industry information to IT functionality to customer support. Each Remedyforce Chatter group post averages about three comments, which means the Remedyforce team is crowdsourcing answers to their questions from all parts of the BMC organization and engaging in broad, solution-focused conversations that get results.

Remedyforce LinkedIn Group: With more than 850 members the Remedyforce LinkedIn group keeps users informed on updates, training opportunities, best practices, comments and questions, and more. The group, started by European partner Infravision, demonstrates how partners are learning from Remedyforce to successfully implement social collaboration technologies. Engagement and usage has gotten so strong that seven subgroups have emerged, which lets users interact more granularly in their geographic regions.

Remedyforce Twitter: Twitter, the 140-character revolution. In FY14 the Remedyforce team made Twitter a focus because it’s a direct line to customers, prospects, and industry influencers. The feed has grown by 260 followers, expanding the reach of the Remedyforce message with more than 450 Twitter mentions, nearly 400 retweets, and more than 1000 clicks on shared content.

Helping a Customer: Team members monitor for product mentions, then discuss internally before responding. When possible, the team drives users to more Remedyforce programs – like the online user community.

Extending Engagement: After the Remedyforce team addressed the product question the user was directed to the online user community, turning a one-off interaction into an ongoing engagement opportunity. Bonus: They sent a direct message (“DM”) with their contact information for offline support.

Social Media + You: You Can Do It.

Be consistent and targeted with your touchpoints. You can’t do a bunch of Tweets and LinkedIn posts at one time then nothing for a week. You need a predictable frequency for the best results.

Add value with the information you are giving. It can’t always be self-promotion. Your content has to be informative so the customer can apply it to their business. It also positions you, your product, and BMC as a resource.

Invest in tools to help you manage social media because the only way to stay on top of the content flow is with a console. For Twitter, Hootsuite offers an amazing dashboard that helps monitor interactions, conversations, and schedules Tweets so you’re keeping consistent.

At its core social media is about thought leadership, offering users a way to connect with influencers in a particular field or industry. Social media allows you to not only learn from experts, but also position both you and your company as an industry resource to media, analysts, prospects, existing customers, and more.

Learn how to increase your visibility through social media with Cloud and DevOps Senior Director of Marketing David Roberts. For real time examples follow him on Twitter, @sandhillstrat.

Sales Prospect:

Social media is a great place to find and build relationships with potential customers, as most customers seek out as much information as possible before making a purchase. When I am in the customer role I want to hear from the segment’s thought leaders on tips like, the best vendors, the best deals, how to get the most out of the service or product, etc. With social media you can easily find and aggregate that information, making it a powerful tool for marketing and sales professionals.

Pain / Need:

When I follow someone I’m saying I want to know what he or she knows so I can get better, more effective, more efficient, etc. I’m looking for solutions to my challenges.

Personally, I use my social presence to my burnish my credentials and position myself as a resource to people who are interested in marketing, technology and BMC technologies. Everyone can do this with their respective professions, their knowledge about their industry, and their company.

Lead Time:

Given my marketing role lead time isn’t the same as someone in sales. In my position social media has really opened the door on softer lead times in areas like media and analysts outreach. We no longer have to worry about inundating this audience with pitches as social media makes it possible to stay in front of them regularly, and more informally. Include media and analysts in your social circles. They are always looking for fresh insight and information. A social media presence reinforces you as an industry resource. Just be care of what you say and consider the ramifications of your posts.

Social Tool Mainly Used:

Social media tools allow me to get involved in conversations about the industry and BMC. I blog and distribute content via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, but I keep Facebook personal.

Twitter lets me lightly call attention to topics. I use Buffer and Hootsuite to schedule Tweets in advance. I find Buffer works best for simple, quick output.

Feedly acts as my RSS Reader – it became my replacement when Goolge Reader went away. Feedly integrates well with Buffer. In the morning I quickly get through the news of the day, then easily inject things into Twitter.

I use Google+ tactically. Ultimately, it’s a really powerful platform, but a bit complicated, which I think has stunted growth. I think it’s a better platform than either Twitter of Facebook because it was developed last; I see it evolving into something bigger. It just doesn’t have the critical mass yet. I use it similarly to how I use Linkedin with content distribution. I generally don’t do a lot of discussions, commenting, or +1ing (the G+ version of retweeting). I pop in, do a post, and pop out.

The Process.

Social media channels help me distribute information and establish credibility, which shows that not only Dave Roberts, but also BMC by reference, is a company worth doing business with because we understand the marketplace and our customers.

We plug our BMC content as well as content from other industry professionals or companies. It’s important to communicate our message, but we also want to incorporate other views by validating, refuting, or addressing other points on industry issues. Addressing issues and using other content as examples also boosts our credibility.

Are you “sold” on using Social Selling tools?

From here on out social media is a necessary part of marketing. Social media tools are rapidly evolving. I think tools like G+ are going to rise in prominence, while others fade. Be ready to adapt to the shifting landscape and keep your social skill current.

As I said earlier, social media allows us to really burnish personal and corporate reputation. From a corporate perspective, companies have to be online to monitor the conversation. I’ve had some interesting interactions with companies recently where I complained or made a comment about them and the social team got back to me literally within a couple minutes. That needs to happen more regularly to keep the conversation going with customers and prospects.

What should others do?

Make social media an intentional part of your day. Just be careful with how you handle it because it can be a big time waster. For example, I don’t typically keep Twitter open during the day. My goal is to have it within arms reach for easy access, but not so accessible I am interrupted every few minutes.

Identify content and do quick read throughs of the news. I generally schedule three or four tweets each day using Buffer. Be structured with your posts; separate business and personal, but don’t be sterile.

Sometimes I follow people on multiple channels. But, I generally don’t discuss the same topics across channels.

Finally, find the key movers and shakers in your industry and don’t be afraid to interact with them. Ask questions and retweet content. All these things will raise your profile and you’ll be off to the races.

The key to lead generation is establishing credibility and trust, meaning lead time is largely based on building rapport and history with prospects. Today people are very open to sharing everyday business challenges on social media, making it easy to identify a prospect’s background and challenges, and focus your efforts accordingly.

As part of our Social Spotlight, Cloud Marketing Manager Dominic Wellington provides tips and tools to navigate the social media landscape and build lasting relationships with prospects.

Sales Prospect:

As a marketer, social media keeps me up-to-date with conversations going on outside my immediate vicinity. Channels like Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ allow me to interact with folks in the Silicon Valley, Eastern Asia, etc. from my office in Italy.

Pain / Need:

Your initial interaction with your contact is critical, so it’s important to focus on the preparation phase. If I’m meeting a customer, prospect, analyst, or someone from the press, I research them online or see if we have already interacted through one of my social media channels. If we have previously connected, it’s a very different conversation than if I’m approaching them without prior contact. If we haven’t interacted before, I review their social media profiles and/or connect with them on LinkedIn to help me identify similar interests or common contacts to make our initial interactions smooth.

Lead Time:

In my role I create lead generation content, so to me the most important thing to know about lead time is that those campaigns can be the key to gaining credibility and trust with the customer. That said, lead time is really based on the time it takes to build history with prospects. It doesn’t require a huge amount of time. Figure out what works for you for quick, frequent touch points, then find tools to simplify the process.

Social Tool Mainly Used:

I’m an avid user of Evernote tools, beyond just note taking. At events I like the Evernote Hello smartphone application. Hello is a business card scanner that ties into LinkedIn, so I can immediately access all their LinkedIn contact details, then enter notes on our conversation, and follow up after the event in a timely manner. It allows blending of the online and physical part of relationship.

I also use Evernote Skitch to make quick drawings or diagrams in real time. You can make a drawing or take notes in front of someone right on your tablet, so it becomes a whiteboard with content you can save and send to everyone.

How do you begin the relationship?

I prefer LinkedIn for research as pretty much everyone is on it. To effectively use LinkedIn, it’s important to know that people use it differently. For some it’s strictly a CV or resume tool; they only log in to update information or add contacts. That’s important because just knowing where someone works and/or their connections can be powerful in relationship development. But, some use it similar to Twitter by posting professional and industry updates or by distributing content like blog posts, news articles, white papers, etc. Get your pitch or relevant content linked to individual or group updates to engage with your connections and prospects in groups. Remember, it takes something personal to resonate and stand out from the crowd.

The process.

Similar to the LinkedIn example, monitor content and dialogue across social media channels to get a pulse on customer pain points and opportunities. Social networks regularly help me understand prospect needs and/or their business challenges. Knowing the items on their mind allows you to address the topic directly during interactions and pitches.

What’s the current status of the relationship?

I look outside the obvious relationships. For example, I find that very social junior-level professionals will tweet thoughts on a pitch after a meeting. Finding this information offers a sense of how the meeting went as well as insight into what the organization thought of the pitch. You can also create a power map of the organization by identifying the up and comers and the business hierarchy.

Are you “sold” on using Social Selling tools?

Social media returns don’t happen overnight, but the more you use the channels the easier it will be to gain insight into your prospects.

What should others do?

Know that when you start using social media as a sales tool it’s is going to be hit or miss, but as you continue to do it you will become more adept with the tools and you will also start to identify the digital watering holes for the type of game you are hunting. For example, you may find that the CIO doesn’t use LinkedIn, but the chief architect regularly interacts on key LinkedIn groups. Leveraging the social channels will help you not only gather information easier, but soon that information will come to you directly. The bottom line is to start using it and don’t get discouraged because it gets easier as you work the social tools – and the payoffs can be great.

At this 25th annual symposium and expo, BMC is proud to be a silver sponsor and welcome over 5,000 attendees from around the world!

Here are just a few of the things you can expect to see at Gartner Symposium Barcelona from BMC Software:

Our amazing Showcase booth, #D23.

We'll be here

Monday, 11 November, 17:45-19:45

Tuesday, 12 November 11:30-19:30

Wednesday, 13 November 11:30 - 19:30

But why do you want to come see us?

MyIT means happy users, happier IT

See the latest version of MyIT, the simple business app that transforms your end users' IT experience. What would you do an app could automatically push wifi configuration to your mobile devices, could tell you where the "Amazon Conference Room" was while you were at a remote office, or how to most easily connect a printer? Give your users easy access to help resources so work can keep moving.

Check out BMC AppZone, the enterprise app store

When it takes days to find, request and receive apps for employees, it means that productivity is lost. BMC AppZone, a cloud-based, enterprise app store gives employees easy, efficient and secure access to cloud, mobile, custom and desktop applications - from any device and location.

See Jason Frye, from the BMC CTO's Office speak about MyIT and BMC AppZone in this video from Gartner Symposium.

Get the big picture for big data.

Get the latest on how BMC Control-M for Hadoop gives you the power to simplify and automate Hadoop application processing, for faster application implementation, big data analytics and integrating Hadoop processing. See how easy it is to create and manage Hadoop jobs and workflows and see how the Hadoop platfrom is integrated in with the enterprise.

With 238 million users LinkedIn has become the network of professionals worldwide. Forty percent of these users check the network daily, and with three million company pages and 1.5 million groups, there’s plenty for users to do, but how can users make the most of LinkedIn for others looking to network with them? Here are the 10 easiest ways to optimized your LinkedIn profile.

1. Photo

People want to see what you look like. Having a professional headshot helps when networking in person and helps to make your profile more personable. And when we say professional headshot, we don’t mean your company logo, a photo of your dog or a picture from the last family reunion or happy hour.

2. Headline

Ninety-nine percent of LinkedIn users use their job title as their headline, but that leaves a lot of good real estate on the table. Use industry terms in your headline in addition to your title. Are you a speaker, author, thought-leader? Are you an Emmy Award winner or creator of 100 patents? Or maybe you’re just an expert in mainframe, helpdesk or cloud computing. Let the world know by including that in your headline.

3. Rich Media

Add videos, links, documents or presentations to your profile by using the “square plus sign” icon into your Summary or under the Experience section. This media can be presentations that you’ve had, papers or collateral about your products, press mentions and more. This type of media definitely helps to tell your story, both as a working professional as well as a job applicant.

4. Summary

Much like the headline, most folks only list their current job duties in their summary. Use this as a space to tell your story, a mini-bio, or to help tout your skills within your profession.

5. Experience

Keep this section up to date, but rather than only listing job duties, describe how you’ve impacted the company, and use the section to tell the larger story of your professional experience.

6. Privacy Settings

Most folks that don’t use their LinkedIn profile do so because they don’t know what is being displayed. Take a look at your privacy settings and you have the opportunity to change the information others see including contact information, your contacts and more. You can even adjust preferences based on how they’re connected to you. If you’re snooping on others’ profiles, you can set your profile to anonymous, so the people you’re checking in on won’t know who you are, but keep in mind that you won’t be able to see your profile visitors’ info at during that time.

7. Publications, Honors & Awards, Projects and Patents

All of these sections are great ways to help tell your story and demonstrate your expertise. Publications can include anything with a URL – speaking engagements, blog posts and more. For Honors & Awards, think of any awards that your customers, clients or associations might have given as they would speak to your expertise. Projects might not only include internal projects you’ve worked on, but anything involving clients or customers. Maybe someday I’ll have a patent to list, but if you do, be sure to list it to show how you’re at the forefront of your industry.

8. Recommendations

Although BMC does have an official HR policy against recommendations and skill endorsements to or from current BMC employees, you can certainly request recommendations for positions outside BMC. They help to add credibility to your profile by giving others’ perspectives of your work.

9. Groups

Visitors to your profile can normally see the groups you’re involved in, so be sure that they’re professional and make sure to be active within your groups.

10. Post Frequently

Perhaps one of the most important tips to optimizing your profile doesn’t have anything to do with the actual content within the profile: by posting frequently, you increase engagement and thus also increase the likelihood that you’ll show up in others’ LinkedIn profile searches. Post industry news, blog posts, articles, or whatever you’re working on.

With just a few simple steps, you can help to make sure your LinkedIn profile helps to tell a better story about you and your career. Better yet, when prospective customers find you on LinkedIn (because you know they profile stalk just as much as you do), they’ll be further convinced that they’re in good hands.

Is your profile 100 percent? What are your top tips for improving your LinkedIn profile? Tell us in the comments below.

Sharing a link to your post isn’t enough to guarantee that it gets read. While 80 percent of readers will read your headline, only 20% will click through to the post itself. Give users a compelling reason to click your link. What can you do if simply tweeting and Facebook posting isn’t enough?

People have less and less time at work these days, yet more and more bloggers and content producers are fighting for their attention. Here's five simple tips for how to improve your blog posts.

1. Improve your headline.

The headline is by far the most important piece of your blog post. While 80 percent will read your blog headline, only 20 percent will go on to read the blog post. Keep it short and simple, state the benefit and don't deceive. Write the headline first, and use it as a way to keep your post honest. Are you living up to the promise you made in the headline? How-to's and lists are popular, such as “How to Embrace the Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud Wave with BSM” or “Top 10 reasons to attend WWRUG13!” See, I know you want to click those links now. Be sure to come back and finish reading this blog post once you’re done.

2. Improve your layout.

People are afraid of commitment, and not just your boyfriend from college. Readers want to know if your lengthy blog post is worth reading. If your post is over a few paragraphs, be sure add section headers to divvy up your post into more manageable chunks and give readers a preview of what they’re getting into.

3. Improve your image.

I don’t mean you need to improve your reputation. Did you add a photo, graph or image? Rule of thumb is one visual per One per 250 words. Photos automatically post on Facebook and other networks and increase clicks and engagement up to 200% more.

4. Improve your keywords.

Keywords drive search engines. The Googles, Bings and Yahoos of the world gauge the relevance of your webpage based in part by which words appear on page. If your blog post is about cloud computing, use cloud-related terms throughout the post. Use them in the title, sub-headers and in bold – search engines give these formats higher weight than plain text. Use keywords to link to other pages at bmc.com or other blog posts. Concentrate on 3-5 terms, but not at the expense of natural language

5. Improve your call to action.

What do you want people to do once they’re done reading your post? Buy something? That would be great, but how about signing up to get an e-book or white paper? Use a clear call to action to have your blog readers continue down the path towards becoming a prospect, but also offer something that they’ll find valuable.

What are your best tips for improving blog posts, let us know in the comments below!

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Robby Dick, Technical Marketing Manager for BMC Software. Robby is one year into his social journey. By learning on his own, and with help from the BMC social team, social has changed the way this traditional guy approaches information in his daily life – and that surprises him. You can find Robby Dick on BMC Communities or via @robbydbmc on Twitter and here on LinkedIn.

How long have you been Social?

About one year—it started because of work.

I had an idea of each of the social platforms--and at a high level what their uses were-- but did not use them.

A few years ago I set up a Facebook account for my wife. After she used it for a few weeks, she told me to get rid of it. I never used it.

How do you get started in Social Media?

It was company inspired when I moved into a new role about a year ago as a technical marketer on the Control-M Solutions marketing team. Social interaction really came about because of that switch.

When I joined the team, the roles were changing. A lot came out of the first team meeting including our team goal of creating a presence in the social world around the product we all know and love—Control M. It’s a small team and we have each run with social and done our own thing, but it started as a company initiative.

How do you find “Inspiration” for social content?

My inspiration for the most part is really great, new material that is coming out of my team, or from others at BMC. And basically when I am doing social, I am pointing people to that content. We have clickable demos, info graphics, funny educational explanation videos, webinars, deep dive product info, etc.

Where does this content live?

Our content resides mostly in the BMC domain. I just put it out there and organize it. When I sit down at the beginning of the week, or at the beginning of each day, I spend a few minutes putting it out there – so that’s when I am doing my Tweeting or social stuff. I try to do at least a couple of things each day.

Do you have a Personal Rule/Mantra?

At this point I really keep it entirely business focused and relevant and in the tenor of business. I would say that 99% of my Tweets are business related.

As I get more comfortable with social interaction, I am loosening that up a bit. I still I think it’s my thing to keep it relevant. I use social platforms to consume different stuff, likegood things to know,” funny things or self improvement, but I keep my posts relevant to a business context.

I want to be a resource.

Would you share your Biggest Win/ Achievement?

The BMC Social Team commented on how they had heard from an analyst that the social content from the BMC Control M Team—specifically how our use of Twitter is “spot on,” relevant, and not noise. That was pretty nice to see, that the relevance was impactful to people we are trying to influence. We have excellent numbers (as compared to the competition) on our Facebook presence too.

How do you approach Time Management?

Basically I went from knowing nothing about social to knowing what I do know in just a few months. I created accounts on each of the social platforms- Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and navigated. Even though I had heard about them, I had no knowledge of their use, or tricks, so I spent a couple of months learning the ins-and-outs to get into a rhythm of being mostly a Twiter user with a little bit of LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. Primarily I use Twitter.

I tried to schedule content once—so I know how that works. But at this point, I work live. If I write a blog, as soon as it’s available, I tweet. Everything is really spur-of-the-moment and live.

I am starting to do analysis on the content I socialize. I feel like some of the content is more engaging –with info graphics or short videos--, but I am just now getting into the analytics of it all with the BMC Social Media Team.

What are your biggest Challenges with Social Media?

It is a challenge not knowing how to understand if the content that I post is getting in front of the people that I want to get in front of. And if it is, if it’s truly relevant and helpful to them in making a decision.

Do you have a Parting Thought to Share?

I realize I sometimes like to get set in my ways so I figured I had no time to do anything else. Up until a year ago, before this started, I was a traditional, “read the newspaper every morning… in my hands…” sort of guy. That’s how I consumed my media.

Even when the company initiative was made, and I knew I was going to be more social, I never saw myself as someone who would consume content that way.

Now I still get the paper every day—and I still read it many mornings—but I do a lot of consumption of news and information via social, because I am familiar with the platforms. So, if I don’t have the time, (or if the paper is delivered wet, or I am on the road,) I now am more than happy to fire up my mobile device or laptop and consume information that way. I feel like I can tailor the information better and find what I am interested in—not just what is presented to me.

The switch has been a good thing to show me that I do have time, and I have changed my formula a bit. It’s a change that I never expected or really thought would occur—but it happened, I am better for it and I am not missing out on anything—it’s been great.

It’s going to continue to change, and I am going to continue to change with it!

Our social media team spans seven cities in four countries speaking more than five languages. We wanted to get together and express our wishes for you this holiday season from our entire team to you.

Thank you for your engagement, your support and your contributions to our social communities this year and into the future. May your holiday season be safe, filled with warmth and joy, and our best wishes to you in 2013.

Also, the official Holiday Greetings from BMC Software Corporate:

Have you seen any creative (and work appropriate) holiday greetings? Please share in the comments!

Live Tweeting is when a person tweets along with a live event. It was popular occurrence during the Presidential debates earlier this year, as well as during popular TV shows. It gives the tweeter an opportunity to establish a voice, communicate with other tweeters around an event and establish thought leadership and influence on the topic.

What is Live Tweeting?

From Twitter:

Live-tweet (v.): to engage on Twitter for a continuous period of time—anywhere from 20 minutes to a few hours—with a sequence of focused Tweets. The focus can be a big live event that everybody's paying attention to (e.g. a TV show or an award show) or it can be an event you create yourself (e.g. a Q&A session with your fans).

This season CBS had a huge push where season premiers or major shows were livetweeted by the stars. They would engage with fans. In the "How I Met Your Mother" episode, Ashley Williams, who plays Victoria, the cupcake girl, even tweeted a photo of her ankles. Why? Because the episode showed who the "mother" was (the main plot of the storyline), but only her ankles:

With live tweeting, fans are given unprecendented access to actors and networks can get a feel for fans' opinions and reactions. The geek in me is even looking forward to choose your own adventure episodes based on tweets, but that may be a little further into the future.

In the business world, LiveTweeting might be used during a webinar, a seminar keynote, or anywhere else where your thoughts about a topic might be of interest to your followers.

How BMC's used Live Tweeting:

For a recent BMC Control-M version 8 launch, we live tweeted the event for anyone not able to stream the video, or for anyone interested in our on the material presented. It helped Control-M reach new audiences, and engage with those watching our live stream.

We highlighted notable quotes, shared photos tweeted from inside the event, and were able to conduct a live Q&A with our on-stage panel from tweets generated as questions to our live tweets.

In the end, we were able to analyze the data and found that live tweeting our event increased our single-day posts and mentions to the highest point in three months - another reason why you should live tweet.

What are some LiveTweeting Best Practices?

1. Before an event, find official event #hashtag and research speakers' @handles so you can contribute to the conversation more effectively. To avoid flooding your follower’s feeds, tweet important points only – you’re not a court reporter. You don’t need to record everything that was said.

2. Only tweet about every 5 minutes. Twitter limits users to about 40 tweets/hour, so be sure you don’t lock your account and miss important points. Always remember to attribute quotes and thoughts.

3. Also, remember that you’re participating in a live conversation. Feel free to reply to other livetweeters and to any responses to your tweets.

Have you live-tweeted an event? What were your thoughts? Did you get engagement? Tell us in the comments below.

Perhaps one of the most confusing areas of Twitter are hashtags. How do they work, who can use them, are there huge directories somewhere where they list all the official hashtags you can use? Once you have some of these questions answered, there’s even more questions surrounding TweetChats and Live Tweets and how those work (we’ll elaborate on these more in the next couple blog posts).

We’ll answer all of these questions for you and help you jump deeper into the conversations you want to engage with on Twitter.

What are Hashtags?

If you were participating, for example, with Gartner Symposium and ITxpo, you might search for a handful of terms, “Gartner” or “Gartner Symposium” or “ITxpo” or some other combination of those terms. Without hashtags, there could be multiple parallel conversations without coordination.

Hashtags were created by some Twitter users in 2007 to organize conversations on Twitter. By having a distinct #Hashtag, users were able to track a single conversation. This is beneficial because instead of conversing past each other, users were able to locate and engage with each other through a dedicated word or phrase.

"The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet" – Twitter

What’s The Difference Between # and @?

A #hashtag is meant to indicate you’re tweeting about a topic where an @mention means you’re intending to converse with a particular account.

For example, you might tweet, “#BMCCloud blog ranks in top 50 #IT blogs according to @BizTechMagazine.” Here, the hashtags, #BMCCloud and #IT both mean that you’re talking about those topics, while @BizTechMagazine means that you’re attributing the ranking to a particular user, or wanting to draw it to their attention..

What are Some Reasons I Should I Hashtag?

Firstly, hashtags highlight major themes of tweet and your followers are able to see your main points at a glance. Hashtags also add interactivity to text and makes it easy to link to other tweets using the same hashtag. Hashtags become clickable links that direct you to a Twitter search for that hashtag. For that reason, people that may be searching for your hashtag can be directed to your content.

If you’re using hashtags for marketing purposes, you can track campaigns and conversations, and review analytics. Additionally, Compendium found that B2B tweets using hashtags increased clicks 193%.

Furthermore, Hashtags are everywhere! Hashtags are no longer just limited to Twitter. Chatter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram, all use # before a word to connect your post to others using the same hashtag, so learning how to use hashtags on Twitter can help to improve your engagement across multiple channels.

Creating a Hashtag:

When using or creating a hashtag, make sure there are no spaces or special characters (!, $, %, ^, &, *, +, .). These will divide up a hashtag, and "#LOVE!ITSM" becomes just "#LOVE."

Also, search hashtags.org or Twitter to see if the hashtag is in use for another event or organization. Hashtags like #BMC aren’t great because many different organizations are called BMC. We use #BMCSoftware. If hashtags.org doesn’t list your hashtag, define your Hashtag at http://www.hashtags.org/definition/add/

Defining your hashtag is unofficial, but does help users understand how to use the hashtag.

Tips for using Hashtags:

Hashtags (#) can be included within the main body of the post, or at the end to indicate topic or category. “I love attending #GartnerDC info sessions” is acceptable, as is “I’m really learning a lot! #GartnerDC”

Don't #spam #with #hashtags. (no more than 2 hashtags per tweet.) And use hashtags only on Tweets relevant to the topic. Twitter even looks for people that repetitively use trending hashtags without relevant content.

Be careful of clicking on links to popular hashtags. Hashtag hijacking is common for large conferences and popular events.

More to come!

Just dive right in and use some hashtags. If you’re not sure how, we’ve hopefully given you at least a start, or see how some of your favorite tweeters are using them, or follow @BMCSoftware and see how we use them!

We'll also have some upcoming blog posts on LiveTweeting and TweetChats, as well as how these relate to hashtags. Look forward to those to come!

What other hashtag tips do you have to share? Please let us know in the comments!

The “About BMC Communities” Blog you know and love has been End-of-Life’d, but don’t fret, it’s getting upgraded to a new and improved social media blog.

In addition to covering the latest tips and tricks about BMC Communities, this blog is evolving to become the official space for the entire BMC Social Media team. You’ll get tips and best practices on how you can use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other social media channels more effectively for business or personal use.

Plus, as a B2B organization, it can be difficult finding Social Media best practices and tips, so we’re happy to help provide some of ours to help lead the way through the B2B Social Media landscape. Read, ask questions, engage, and we can all hopefully learn a bit from each other.

We think you’ll enjoy our changes. We’ve got an amazing team with lots of ideas to share and we hope you’ll learn from some of our experience.